Laberthonnière to von Hügel (1 April 1924), pp. 85-6:{The Catholic Encyclopedia says Laberthonnière was "a severe critic of Church authority and of Scholastic philosophy (but not of St. Thomas Aquinas)".}

Laberthonnière to von Hügel (1 April 1924) wrote:

I was astonished (he wrote) to find St. Thomas figuring among those to whom you express your spiritual gratitude…To me—I say it to you in all simplicity—he appears to stand doctrinally for a radical anti-Christianity. In place of the Gospel's God of love he put an egocentric God. In the final reckoning he accepts predestination in its most brutal form. His metaphysic justifies the Inquisition and slavery. In a word he is the theologian par excellence of theocracy. For him the Church consists essentially in the ecclesiastical organization regarded as a <i>domination</i> that is to be exercised under the direction and to the advantage of the theologians…I have found that Buchez had a way of characterizing him that seems to me perfectly just. In St. Thomas, says Buchez, all the questions are asked in Christian language, but all the answers are given with a pagan meaning. And in fact—and this is what in the end irritates me against him most—he jealously retains the letter of the Christian tradition, but always in discarding its spirit…

All the evidence shows that Our Lord's knowledge which was not infinite had a limit. Why want to ascribe to Our Lord a knowledge which he declared he did not have? He knew at least as well as the theologians what to believe about the extent of his knowledge. But we are always up against the same system of a priorisme, the "inferential theology".

Mignot to Hébert (19 March 1886):

Mignot to Hébert (19 March 1886) wrote:

How right you are to see only words in the scholastic metaphysic! They are a prioristes…They invent a definition out of nothing, then they finish by believing in its objective truth…

Mignot to von Hügel (27 February 1898):

Mignot to von Hügel (27 February 1898) wrote:

I really do not understand the general craze for the scholasticism of St. Thomas. It is absurd! What can philosophical arguments and affirmations that are a priori or often wrongly deduced have to do with purely critical and historical inquiries?

It's shocking, isn't it? These are men without faith in Our Lord's divinity, or in Revelation. St. Thomas is just an accidental victim in these assertions.

The thought that immediately occurs to me is you could put those statements on Fisheaters or Suscipe or Angelqueen and attribute them to Bergoglio or Ratzinger, to whom they belong equally well, and they'd begin challenging you to prove that they are heretical... What dogma do they directly deny? Where's the open admission by these men that they won't be taught by the Church? Nothing to see here, move along... !!!

_________________In Christ our King.

Thu Jun 05, 2014 1:16 am

Alan Aversa

Joined: Fri Oct 28, 2011 3:40 amPosts: 438Location: Tucson, Arizona

Re: Paleo-Modernists disparaging St. Thomas Aquinas

John Lane wrote:

The thought that immediately occurs to me is you could put those statements on Fisheaters or Suscipe or Angelqueen and attribute them to Bergoglio or Ratzinger, to whom they belong equally well, and they'd begin challenging you to prove that they are heretical... What dogma do they directly deny? Where's the open admission by these men that they won't be taught by the Church? Nothing to see here, move along... !!!

I should've done that! I posted them there, but I could've left out the attributions, interspersed some Ratzinger quotes, and made the readers guess which quotes belong to whom.

What's interesting is that there is a common thread all the way back from these "paleo-Modernists" to today's neo-Modernists, for example:

Ratzinger's «Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977» p. 44 wrote:

I had difficulties in penetrating the thought of Thomas Aquinas, whose crystal-clear logic seemed to be too closed in on itself, too impersonal and ready-made. … [Arnold Wilmsen] presented us with a rigid, neo-scholastic Thomism that was simply too far afield from my own questions.

It is true that the [council] documents bore only weak traces of the biblical and patristic renewal of the last decades, so that they gave an impression of rigidity and narrowness through their excessive dependency on scholastic theology. … By "sources of revelation", what was meant was Scripture and tradition; their relationship to one another and to the Magisterium had been dealt with solidly in the forms of post-Tridentine scholasticism according to the custom of the textbooks then in use. In the meantime, the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation had made itself at home in Catholic theology.

What's interesting is that there is a common thread all the way back from these "paleo-Modernists" to today's neo-Modernists, for example:

Yes, and once one has absorbed the doctrine of Pascendi and read a few bits and pieces from the original Modernists, the reality that Rahner, de Lubac, Congar, Ratzinger, and the rest were simply Modernists stands out as an undeniable reality. Same fundamental ideas, same sly and prideful approach, same contempt for tradition, same phraseology; even the same dogmas are aimed at destruction by these characters - that is, the most purely supernatural ones. For those are the ones that most totally rest upon faith - the divinity of Christ and His miracles, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Real Presence, purgatory, the eternity of hell, etc.

_________________In Christ our King.

Fri Jun 06, 2014 12:29 am

Alan Aversa

Joined: Fri Oct 28, 2011 3:40 amPosts: 438Location: Tucson, Arizona

Re: Paleo-Modernists disparaging St. Thomas Aquinas

John Lane wrote:

even the same dogmas are aimed at destruction by these characters - that is, the most purely supernatural ones. For those are the ones that most totally rest upon faith - the divinity of Christ and His miracles, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Real Presence, purgatory, the eternity of hell, etc.

or the AssumptionThe end of the paragraph from where the second Ratzinger quote above comes says that

Ratzinger's «Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977» p. 119 wrote:

This impasse [between "post-Tridentine scholasticism" and the "historical-critical method"] is indeed what had made the dispute on the dogma of Mary's bodily Assumption into heaven so difficult and insoluble.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum